Students on the streets: holding on beyond the march, the test of 5 November

According to franceinfo, the spokesperson of the Union étudiante said on Sunday that "la jeunesse ne lâche pas" ("young people are not letting go"), a day after the 31 October demonstrations. Also according to franceinfo, turnout at this latest Saturday was slightly down but remained strong. New rallies have been announced for next week, with a high point on 5 November. The details of the demands, the participation figures and the local organisational arrangements are not in the dispatch we have: we will not invent them.

What follows is our reading, not an established fact. A slight dip after several Saturdays of marches is the moment that party headquarters dread and that living movements go through. The Saturday procession is a convenient ritual: it is counted, photographed, and commented on in studio panels. It can also turn into a spectacle one watches rather than a thing one acts on. The real question is not whether there were a little fewer people on the streets, but what these thousands of young people are learning, between one march and the next, about deciding for themselves.

This is where the Luxemburgist tradition is useful, without turning it into a relic. Rosa Luxemburg saw in mass movements a school quicker than any party school: one learns by doing. The debate is an old one: on one side the creative force of spontaneity, on the other the need for organisation so that revolt does not evaporate. Our reading holds both ends together. Anger without structures dissipates; structures without anger become bureaucracies. Open general assemblies, mobilisation committees, votes that genuinely bind: this is what would turn a calendar of dates into a movement, and not merely a succession of rallies.

The 5 November will no doubt be presented as a test. Let us be wary of the vocabulary. If a movement is judged only by the size of its processions, it is subjected to the barometer of the rolling news channels and the patience of the ministries. Luxemburg answered those who wanted perfect organisation and a well-stocked treasury that history does not wait for such ideal conditions: it is struggles themselves that forge collective strength. Organisation is born of action, rarely before it.

There is also the classic trap of negotiation. Every concession wrung out must pass a simple test: does it increase the confidence and power of those who won it, or does it send them home reassured and disarmed? A compromise that demobilises is not a victory; it is management. Leaders quick to take a seat at the table would do well to remember that what is given in calm times is taken back in times of profit.

The youth "ne lâche pas" ("is not letting go"), says its spokesperson. Good. But holding on does not simply mean returning to march: it means deciding, collectively, what one wants to do with the street. A demonstration ends at dispersal; a movement begins when no one truly goes home.